Judge seeks $400,000 fee despite criticized work

A judge claims he deserves a nearly $400,000 legal fee for an injury case that he failed to take to court for 14 years but that later resulted in a $3.6 million settlement.

Judge Michael Hatty of Livingston County Circuit recently sued Detroit-based attorney Richard Goodman for what he claims is his share of the settlement received by Catherine Logan-Brown, 21, who suffered closed head injury nearly 18 years ago when she fell from a bunk bed at the Art Van Furniture store in Clinton Township.

Hatty was hired as the attorney in 1995. He relinquished the case in 2009 when he was appointed judge.

Goodman represented Logan-Brown when she sued in 2010 in Wayne County Circuit Court (It was transferred to Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.) and formally gained the settlement in September. Art Van’s insurer paid the claim.

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Hatty says in his lawsuit filed Dec. 3 that he should receive one-third of Goodman’s $1.2 million fee (less 20 percent given to attorney Dean Robb) for his years of work on the case, even though he never filed a complaint and his work has been criticized by Goodman and a Macomb judge.

Hatty claims he was waiting to see how Logan-Brown’s injuries developed over the years and that the statute of limitations wouldn’t expire until she became an adult, court documents say.

He calls Goodman’s retention of most of the fee “outrageous” because “he never would have received Catherine’s case were if it not for Hatty’s referral.”

Hatty gave the case to a attorney Donald Lewis, who had worked on the case but referred it to Suttons Bay-based Robb, who passed it to Goodman.

But Goodman countered to The Macomb Daily that Hatty should not collect such a large fee and is fortunate Goodman garnered a multi-million dollar settlement for Logan-Brown. He accused Hatty of lax legal efforts, such as failing to obtain the bunk bed or interview store employees. Brown-Logan filed a legal malpractice claim against Hatty.

“Judge Hatty sat on this case for 14 years while evidence disappeared and witnesses’ memories were gone,” Goodman said. “It took us over two years of intense hard work, but I think we did some great stuff in this case.”

“Suffice it to say that few lawyers would have even taken a 14-year-old case such as this, and fewer could have settled it with Art Van years later for $3.6 million,” Goodman’s attorneys says in a legal brief filed Friday for a hearing to be held Monday on Hatty’s request to freeze the fee funds, in front of Judge Diane Druzinski in Macomb County Circuit Court in Mount Clemens.

Hatty’s attorney, Mount Clemens-based attorney Ted Metry, declined to comment. Hatty did not return a message left Friday on his court office voicemail.

The incident occurred March 11, 1995, at the Gratiot Avenue store. Catherine Logan-Brown, 3, was with her parents, Dawn Logan-Brown and Robert Brown of Brighton; her uncle, Craig Logan of Clinton Township; and Jennifer Davis of Clinton Township, to purchase a bunk bed.

Catherine’s parents and Jennifer Davis went to look at couches while Craig Logan “went for a walk” with his niece, according to legal documents. She climbed onto the top bunk of the metal bed as Logan stood at the ladder. She said she could see her parents, and as her uncle turned his head, the side railing gave way and she fell about six feet to the floor, documents say. Catherine was “screaming,” bloodied in the mouth, her mother said, and showed signs of a head injury that was revealed over the years.

Logan “described the safety rail for the bunk bed as flimsy and lacking a tightening screw,” Judge Druzinski notes in a prior opinion in the case.

Hatty said the “situation as one involving negligence where an Art Van employee failed to assemble the bed the right way,” the judge wrote.

In his recent lawsuit, Hatty says he “was hired and never discharged” from the case by Dawn Logan-Brown.

He says Lewis told Robb in two letters in 2009 and 2012 that “Hatty would be paid a contingent fee one-third of the one-third attorney fee.”

Goodman says Dawn Logan-Brown said she never talked to Hatty after informing her he had to drop the case because Gov. Jennifer Granholm appointed him judge. Dawn Logan-Brown testified she was “angry” with Hatty, who “left this hanging,” legal documents say.

“She considered her relationship with Judge Hatty to be terminated and severed when he withdrew and sent their case to Mr. Lewis,” Goodman says.

Lewis told her he couldn’t take the case due to a conflict of interest.

“Hatty never again spoke with Don Lewis about the case, he never spoke to Dean Robb about the case and he never spoke to Richard Goodman about the case,” Goodman says.

Goodman told The Macomb Daily he would possibly settle the case without a lawsuit, but Hatty refused to negotiate.

Goodman says Hatty cannot recover under the conflict-of-interest section of ethics rules in the Michigan Professional Code of Conduct for lawyers because after the 2011 lawsuit was filed, he argued against Logan-Brown.

“He decided that it was in his interest for Catherine to lose the case against Art Van and strongly advocated that she lose the case against Art Van,” Goodman’s brief says.

Part of Goodman’s criticism of Hatty’s work received support from Druzinski, although Druzinski dismissed the malpractice claim.

Druzinski in an August written opinion notes Hatty’s failure to sue Art Van, pointing out he knew about Catherine’s closed-head injury in October 1995.

She says Hatty was negligent, pointing to his failure to “preserve evidence” or “advise of the need to preserve the bunk bed from which she fell suggests a failure to use reasonable skill, care discretion and judgment,” she says.

Still, however, she granted Hatty’s request for a dismissal; she knew the settlement had been reached.

“Plaintiff (Logan-Brown) failed to prove she lost a potentially better outcome from defendant Hatty’s failure to previously file a lawsuit to satisfy the proximate-cause element of a legal malpractice claim,” she says.